Read More

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

"I paid rapt attention during the afternoon and evening I spent at 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,' which opened in a blaze of outrageous enchantment on Monday night at the Palace Theater.

"Like the novels that preceded it, 'The Cursed Child' is stuffed with arcana-filled plots that defy diagrams and baldly wrought sentimental life lessons, along with anguished dives into the earnest, tortured solipsism of adolescence.

"By rights, such a combination should try the patience of any grown-up. But like Ms. Rowling’s books, the play vanquishes resistance. …

"This production captures Ms. Rowling’s sensibility even more persuasively than did the special-effects-driven films."

"It is, quite simply, spellbinding: The Show That Lived Up to Expectations — and Then Some. Three years after J. K. Rowling announced her boy wizard would hit the stage, 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' - no mere rehash, but a whole new chapter - proves a proper theatrical blockbuster.

"Not just at the box office, but onstage as well: a captivating story given a spectacular staging and — Rowling’s specialty — a big, big heart.

"Twenty years ago, Harry Potter turned a generation onto reading. 'The Cursed Child' could do the same for theater."

“Keep the Secrets is the injunction on badges handed out as we leave the theatre. It’s a motto that makes life hard for us hacks, but I am happy to divulge that John Tiffany, as director of this pair of two-and-a-half-hour plays, has masterminded a thrilling theatrical spectacle.

"It is also one that will make much more sense to hardened Potterheads than to anyone who is not a member of the global cult."

"Well, Harry Potter fans, you will be glad to know that JK Rowling, Jack Thorne, and John Tiffany have created a theatre production of immense wonder, one that is highly referential to Harry Potter stories past and is, above all, truly magical."